arsenicCatnip

Karkat grabbed the piece of paper out of Nepeta’s hands paws and looked at it closer.

Yup, she was right. Commoner precinct, apartment complex 1 room 6. 

"OH. WELL I GUESS WE’RE LIVING TOGETHER THEN…"

He wasn’t upset. At least it was someone he knew, rather than a stranger.

And they got along ok. 

It was just sort of a shock. He wasn’t expecting her to even be here, let alone living in the same block as him.

"WELL, ARE YOU ALL MOVED IN? DID THEY TAKE YOUR CLAWS TOO?"

Still, it was quite nice to know that Karkat hadn’t changed much in the time she’d been dead.

She grinned brightly. “It’ll be fun! I purromise, I am so good at fun.” Probably not the kind of things Karkat would find fun, but it was the thought that counted.

Her grin turned sheepish, and she suddenly found her shoes incredibly interesting. “Ms Leijon offurs her apawlogies and confesses she was mostly being furry curious about her hivemate.” Role playing as a defence? She had no idea where that notion could have come from! She cleared her throat slightly, looking up from her shoes. “But ummm. I don’t really have anything to move in?”

Karkat stopped himself. It probably wasn’t a smart idea to bring up what had happened on the meteor. 

Wait, did she just offer him tea in his own room? No that couldn’t be right.

That reminded him. Nepeta was in his apartment. The initial shock of seeing her alive had sidetracked him.

She gasped, hands once again flying to her face. "This is your block!?" She dropped her hands to rummage through one of her pockets, triumphantly holding up the slip of paper with her assigned address on after finally finding it.

First Eridan and now Nepeta, too?

And why the ever loving fuck is she in my room?

He had just recovered from the shock of the seadweller showing up. This was too much.

"YOU’RE ALIVE…"

Smooth, Karkat.

It hadn’t helped that he had actually missed Nepeta. Especially after meeting Nice and having her call him “karkitty” as a joke. As much as he was annoyed with the human, he stuck around mostly because of how much she had reminded him of the troll now bouncing before him.

"WAIT. HOLD THE FUCK UP. *KARCATFISH*?”

Honestly, she couldn't exactly say she cared how she'd been brought back. Being dead hadn't been all that bad, all things considered, but it was nice to be able to feel her heartbeat again.

"Ummm. Are you going to come in? I could purrobably make some tea or something." That is, if her mysterious hivemate had tea. She hadn't had a chance to poke around the nutrition block yet. Still, it would be rude to not offer!

Karkat had had a pretty uneventful day. He went to the shopping district to get some food, practiced with his sickle in the slums, and walked around the 2nd district, taking mental notes of anything he could make use of.

He had just gotten back to his apartment building and took out his key to unlock the door when something felt out of place. It might have been his imagination, but he could’ve sworn he had made sure to lock the door when he left. He probably simply forgot to. He wasn’t completely used to having to lock doors yet. 

Hopefully nobody had taken the opportunity to take any of his (not valuable) possessions in his absence.

Cautiously, Karkat opened the unlocked door and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what was inside.

No, not what. 

WHO.

She was halfway through thoroughly investigating the main block when she heard the door open, immediately hopping to her feet and turning with a bright grin. Only for her grin to be instantly replaced by a look of deep surprise.

"Karkat?"

She very nearly gave in to the temptation to tacklepounce him, instead settling for clapping both hands to her cheeks and bouncing on the spot. She'd missed him! A lot!

Nepeta Leijon

Requested by: purplepuffin

It was nice actually to see your friends- your not dead friends- again. Hanging out with dead people hadn’t exactly gotten boring but it had gotten to be something NORMAL and in your opinion- hanging out with dead trolls should never be normal. Death wasn’t funny, even if you were able to TALK to dead trolls it was still traumatic and rather upsetting.

You had to pull a grimace at this point as you remember a comment you’d made upon finding the dead dancestors. What had you said? Right, you would prefer to hang out with dead trolls like Nepeta rather than these guys. Kanaya had told you that Nepeta was here but you weren’t really sure what you were going to say to her. Sorry? Sorry for what though? You hadn’t killed her. Sorry for being a shit leader? Something like that maybe, you really didn’t know but you’d seen most of the other trolls here- you could not ignore her.

And if she was like Eridan who had died then she was (somehow) alive so maybe that might make things better? You were just kidding yourself now, but you had to find her. It took you a while ind you, you didn’t know which island she was on and walking around this place wasn’t easy but eventually you spotted a blue hat with horns poking out of it.

“NEPETA?”

The islands were interesting, at least. Tenebris was filled with interesting animals to hunt, and Lumen almost reminded her of the Land of Little Cubes and Tea with how bright and cheery it was. She'd taken to just wandering, partly in hopes of running in to her friends and partly because being alive was great!! And she couldn't possibly just sit in her hive and mope. Moping never got anything done. Even if she had to admit there were times she'd just sat and stared sadly at her OTP on her shipping wall.

One thing she definitely wasn't expecting on her latest walk was a very familiar voice calling out to her. She turned sharply, her tail swishing behind her, hands flying to her face when she spotted her nubby horned friend.

“Um, y-yeah, I was,” Crona answered, twirling a strand of pink hair round his finger. “I think that most, if not all, of the people here were p-pulled away from their homes…”

The girl’s face suddenly lit up and her grin widened even further, and Crona briefly wondered if he had said something silly. Instead of dwelling much on it, he just angled his gaze to the ground as he listened to her speak, somewhat embarrassed. It was much easier to talk to people if he wasn’t looking at them.

“Well… d-does he… look like— look like you?”

At least she’d had some experience being pulled into strange worlds! Her home was completely gone, after all, and until recently she thought she’d be trapped in the dreambubbles forever. “But that’s awful!” She meant it! She hadn’t even used the obvious pun! No wonder the human looked so sad."...I'm sorry." It was probably worthless, but there wasn't much else she could offer.

She gave a small giggle in response to his question, automatically picturing her silly moirail pretending to be her. She abandoned the image quickly in favour of answering, though, considering what had happened last time she got him to roleplay.

The cat puns just reminded him more of the Disciple. But this troll was obviously not here- not even her when she was younger. So maybe this troll was from the future- like Karkat and Kanaya were, did that make her the Disciple’s descendant?

Whatever the case, the Sufferer could ask that later. Right now he was just trying to wrap his thoughts around what the troll had said.

“I’M SORRY BUT YOU DON’T *LOOK* VERY DEAD. ARE YOU SURE? I MEAN I TRUST YOUR JUDGEMENT ON THE MATTER, BUT YOU *DO* LOOK RATHER ALIVE.”

The Sufferer responded in a confused manner. She really didn’t look dead but then again, the Sufferer had thought HE was dead when he’d wound up here. And who was to say he wasn’t? He’d decided through a logical thought process that he wasn’t dead but maybe he’d been wrong all this time. Maybe everyone here was dead and this was the afterlife- oh this was too confusing.

And the confusion did not stop there either.

“I THINK WE’RE HAVING A PROBLEM IN THIS DISCUSSION ABOUT THE PLANET BECAUSE I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT A DREAM BUBBLE IS. WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING IT IN A LITTLE MORE DETAIL PLEASE?”

“I don’t?” She paused for a moment, then simply shrugged. “That’s purretty strange, but I’m defurnately dead.” She gave the adult a bright smile, to show she wasn’t at all upset about it. Living without her moirail would have been far worse than Gamzee beating her to death, she just knew it.

She gave a small, slightly embarrassed chuckle. Apparently the bubbles were hard to explain even if you were good with the temporal nonsense of time and space the game loved so much. She’d been much more concerned with people. Still, the adult was trying to help her so it was only fair she try to return the favour. “Um. Well, they’re bubbles! But not the fun popping kind that are fun to chase. They’re made of memories and exist in the Furthest Ring and the horrorterrors made them fur Fefurry! And… I’m furry bad at explaining.”

It was still strange how much the adult looked like Karkat, but Nepeta had seen more than her fair share of strange sights during the game. Like the humans! Or meeting her dancestor, even if it had only been for the smallest of moments thanks to Vwiskers and Feffurry’s dancestor. Oh! Was that who this troll was? But he seemed much less talky than the one she’d seen during the fun ghost party that apparently hadn’t been a party at all.

Wow, what a disaster.

What was it that caused some people to be chosen and not others? Madoka hadn’t thought about it much, but she wished there was someone to ask. 

It always took Madoka a minute to remember to shake hands- confusion over customs was hardly the strangest part about Pandora, but she still was occasionally caught off guard. “My name’s Madoka Kaname.”

"We will!" She promised, absolutely sure of herself. "I am an expurrt at this kind of thing, you have no idea." Even if some developments had taken her completely by surprise, a good huntress never focused on her mistakes!

She continued to kick her legs for a few more moments, before swinging to her feet and spinning back to face Madoka in a whirl of coat and tail. Her own nightmares were far from forgotten, but just a handshake had reminded her quite clearly that humans didn't have the advantage of having quite warm blood to fend off the cold nights. Or a warm coat!